


Acheron

by Mooncactus



Category: Skulduggery Pleasant - Derek Landy
Genre: Gen, elements of romantic valduggery, mentions of tanguine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 11:50:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13681104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mooncactus/pseuds/Mooncactus
Summary: She frowned. “You’ve got a Tinder?”“I’ll remind you I’m taken, girly,” Billy-Ray Sanguine said. “And I don’t use it for that.”“You have a Tinder so you can murder people?”





	Acheron

_Something is rotten in the state of Ireland._

Úna studied the sentence, written in the green ink of her 4-color-pen, and then studiously scribbled it out in red. Too derivative. This blog - this article - this _expose_ \- was going to be her magnum opus, her life’s work. It needed to start out strong.

 _I opened my eyes_ , she wrote, and then thought, _woof._ No, first person was a bad idea, and it couldn’t get more cliche.

_There is magic in Ireland._

No, no one would take it literally. It sounded like a travel advertisement.

_There are wizards in Ireland._

No, no one would take it seriously.

Úna took the entire page of her notebook between her index finger and thumb and tore it out. No matter how hard she tried, Úna couldn’t come up with something that didn’t sound like it came out of a bad Gordon Edgley novel. She crumpled it in her fist and resisted the deep dark urge to litter. She’d have to burn it, of course: she burned all her scraps of writing, in case it was found by the wrong person. (Or if one her flatmates, Terri or Kennabeth, would pin it on the notice board of their college again.) She had found a man digging through the trash three nights ago. Terri thought it was “some homeless lunatic”, but Úna knew better.

Terri and Kennabeth had been at the pub two months ago, when Úna had been up all night studying for a forensics exam. She had her window open, and was disturbed by a warm, hot air carrying a stench that crawled under her skin as it drifted through the window -- she stood up from her laptop and crossed her room to lean out the window, and reeled when she saw two shapes prowling down the alley. One was man shaped - but closer to a gingerbread cookie cutter than an actual human, and way, way too big. It was too dark to make any features, but a tiny light came beside it - held in the hand of a teenage girl.

Úna watched them for a minute or two before the girl’s head suddenly jerked in her direction, and Úna used all of her dormant ninja skills to drop to her floor silently.

There she sat for the rest of the night, into the morning, head reeling.

(She mentioned seeing something weird at breakfast, and the flatmates just said she had been up too late and was hallucinating.)

Ever since that night, Úna had been uncovering all sorts of strange happenings in Lurgan, and its surrounding towns. Police cases that were suddenly brushed over, residents with lasps in their memory, people who would give her weird looks in the street and then were never seen again - for a while, Úna had thought it might have been aliens, but more and more, her gut was telling her it was _magic_.  It had begun to consume her life, her every thought. The wall her bed was against was starting to look like it came out of _It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia_.

Úna knew. Soon, they would know that she knew. And Úna would know that they knew that she knew.

Here, now, with her notebook paper still in her first, she stilled. She was sitting in a cafe, hiding from the rain. She wore a shabby raincoat and brand new prescription glasses that were so good she felt like she could see through walls. Her dark brown roots were starting to show in her pink hair, and on the rungs of her chair, her toes were tapping out a nervous beat in grey trainers.

She certainly looked the part of a conspiracy theorist. She shoved the ball of paper into her messenger bag and took another sip of her tea, immediately burning her tongue. _Another layer of taste buds gone_ , she thought wistfully, but took another sip anyway. It was always a burnt mouth or brain freeze with her.

Lifting her head, she studied the coffee shop patrons. No one special or scary looking today. Just the same people she saw every day. Although… perhaps that was the point, maybe these people were here to watch her…

No, she thought, dismissing the theory. There was no way any of the wizard-aliens-whatever figured it out yet. She had kept her mouth firmly shut. ...Unless it was Kennabeth again… she had heard whisper about something that sounded like it involved her name in class the other day…

She scowled into her still scalding tea as the bell, hung on the door, rang. Úna looked up as it opened, a long black umbrella poking it’s way in.

A blond man in a long coat followed, his collar pulled up so most of his face was hidden. Something about him made the hairs on the back of Úna’s neck stand up. She watched him over her glasses lenses as he ordered some sugary drink with whipped cream, chocolate shavings, and chocolate syrup on top. Úna wrinkled her nose. While he was waiting at the other end of the counter, his gaze casually siddled over to her.

Úna flinched and pulled up her notebook, staring at the contents like she was revising for an exam. (It was upside down at first - she corrected it quickly, hoping no one noticed.) After a few seconds, she dared to glance back up, finding the man leaning against the pick up counter, arms crossed.

“Yes?” he drawled.

Úna blinked, looking behind her.

“Nope. I mean you, pinkie,” he said, in a lazy Southern accent.

Úna slowly dragged her gaze back to him. She wasn’t used to being focused on.

He wiggled his fingers in a wave. The barista called out _Billy-Ray,_ and he swiped his drink off the counter and made a B-line towards Úna.

“Pinkie?” she echoed, as he pulled his chair out. Had they met before?

“And the brain, brain, brain, brain,” he deadpanned.

She scowled. “Like Miley’s dad?” she asked, pointing at his cup.

He grimaced at her. “What are you, twelve?”

“Eighteen,” she corrected, and because she didn’t know how to keep her mouth shut: “Hannah Montana _aired_ when I was twelve.”

“Course it did,” he said, sighing, and then pulled out the chair opposite her. He took a long sip from his triple chocolate drink.

Úna stared at him. His hair was sunbleached and hung past his ears. His teeth were nice, she could see how white and straight they were when he started chewing on his straw. He was scruffy in a deliberate sort of way, a Hollywood leading man way, and beneath his raincoat was a collared shirt. That was all fine, if unusual for her itty bitty town.

But he was wearing sunglasses _indoors._

He took another long sip of his drink, seemingly pleased to be examined. Úna felt like he would happily pose if she took out her notebook to sketch him.

She began, slowly, to scoot her chair back, to bend down to put her things back in her bag, as if she was getting ready to switch to another table. She didn’t think she would, though… she was more curious about how he’d react to her attempting to leave.

When she looked back up, he was settling back in his seat like he had been stretched across the table. Looking comfy and cozy.

“What do you want?” she said, finally, unable to resist.

“I’ve heard,” he said, slow as molasses, “there’s someone in this here town investigatin’ strange happenings. Name of Úna. That’d be you, I reckon?”

Her mouth opened in surprise, and then she nodded.

Billy-Ray laughed at some secret joke, scratching the back of his neck. “You’re lucky you ran into me, lemme tell ya.”

“And why would that be?” Úna asked, voice flat.

“I’ve got a juicy deal of an interview for you.”

She frowned. Took a long swig of her (finally drinkable) tea. And then squinted at him. She had been suspicious, but the use of her name confirmed it. “I know why you’re really here.”

“You do?”

“I know who sent you.”

He leaned forward, eyebrow raised above the frames of his glasses. “You _do?”_

She nodded. “My flatmates put you up to this, didn’t they?”

Billy-Ray looked genuinely flabbergasted. “What?”

“My flatmates. Kennabeth and Terri. They, what? Found you at some local theatre and paid you to put on a cheesy American accent and pretend you were in on the wizard thing?”

“...What?” Billy-Ray barked. “No!”

“I get it,” she said, squinting. “I bet they told you I’m sooo crazy and annoying with the magic thing, so they put on a little prank. But you know what, Mr. Miley Cyrus’s dad? At least I take the trash out.” She slammed her tea cup on the saucer to emphasize her point. “So I don’t think they have the right to, to, to humiliate me because I had a theory about something strange going on…”

As she was speaking, Úna began to realize how stupid the whole theory was. It all sort of fell flat, when she thought about it, and this guy -- with the fakest damn American accent she had ever heard - just cemented how goofy it was. She didn’t know what the big monster guy had been … but she _had_ been sleep deprived...

“Now, hold on,” he said, as she got up, taking another big swig of her tea, nearly choking on it. He turned to her as she stood. “I actually got something important to say--”

“Tell them that I was totally convinced and went raving mad,” Úna said, sticking her nose up. “Make ‘em give you a big tip. Or… whatever you give actors. Just leave me alone.”

“Wait just one _second,”_ he said, standing. He only stood a little bit taller than her.

He lowered his sunglasses, just by a few centimeters, like he was going to give her a conspiratorial wink. Instead, the gesture revealed that he did not have eyeballs.

He.

Did not.

Have.

Eyeballs.

Úna stifled a scream with a hard swallow, her heart pounding and world spinning beneath her. Billy-Ray smirked, adjusting his glasses back to normal. “That enough magic for ya?”

She nodded, rapidly, running the whole encounter back through her head. The way he was studying her right now didn’t seem like a blind man -- _and_ he called her pinkie, so it seemed, against all odds, he could see. Despite the giant gaping black holes _in his face._

Definitely magic.

“Let’s move this conversation away from eavesdroppers,” he said, picking his frappuccino back up. “Shall we?”

Úna nodded numbly.

They walked out the door, Billy-Ray keeping his umbrella over both of them, finishing off the last of his drink and tossing it in a trashcan. Úna shuddered, feeling a phantom toothache.

They walked down the sidewalk, away from the shop. It was pouring with rain, and everyone was hustling to their cars or some kind of shelter, not paying them much mind. She had only moved her six month ago, and her accent still marked her as an outsider. Billy-Ray here probably couldn’t even tell the difference, but she was always wondering whether she made the right choice by going to school here. Kennabeth and Terri, obviously, did not help.

Billy-Ray wasn’t saying a word, and Úna was getting nervous. They were close to an alleyway, and Úna decided that, no, she was not going to be that stupid. She stopped walking.

He frowned. “What’s the hold up?”

“We can talk here,” she said, feeling a headache coming on. “We’ll just talk quietly.”

“Rather not, pinkie. There’s people who don’t take kindly to the things you know. You heard of Kenny Dunne?”

She shook her head.

“Huh,” he said, sounding surprised. “Musta finally been killed, then. Could be you next.”

Úna shuddered. “I don’t know if I want to keep having this conversation with you, sir.”

“Too late,” he said, cheerfully. “You’re in deep now.”

Úna planted her feet, refused to walk another step. Billy-Ray just calmly came to a spot and turned to look back at her.

“If you’re aiming to kidnap me,” she said, swaying on her feet a little. “In the middle of the sidewalk is maybe not the best place to do it.”

She suddenly swerved, and he caught her, a hand flat on the small of her back. It made her skin crawl beneath her raincoat and sweater. He grinned at her, bits of whipped cream caught in his teeth.

“For mortals, maybe,” he said, dropping the umbrella. Úna watched as it loudly clattered on the sidewalk, and then her gaze fell to their feet, where…

Where the ground was opening up from beneath them.

Cliche or not, Úna had no other words for it: the entire world went black.

* * *

 Úna woke on a drab pleather couch, her mouth dry and limbs numb and aching. Her eyes were dry, she peeled them open achingly slowly to study her surroundings. She appeared to be in a cheap rundown apartment that looked like it hadn’t been lived in since the 80s. She half expected Vincent and Jules to bust through the door. The curtains were only half hung, a rod propped up against the couch she was on. The lack of coverage on the window, didn’t matter much with the weather so dreary outside.

Billy-Ray sat before her in a wooden kitchen chair that had seen better days - better _decades,_ even - looking pleased as punch.

“Ah,” he said, grinning. “There you are.”

“You drugged my tea,” she said, groaning, finding it difficult to lift her head. The oldest trick in the book; she was _infuriated_ she fell for it.

“Well, aren’t you the little detective,” he said, tilting his head. “Indulge me, Úna, now that there ain’t anyone around to eavesdrop.” He leaned forward, his expression deadly serious. “Do you know who I am?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head.

He looked a little disappointed. “Really?”

She shook her head, and then stopped. “I mean, _no, I do not_ , not, _no, I do_.”

“Welp,” he said. “Billy-Ray Sanguine, Hitman Deluxe.” Then he honest to God fished out a business card out of his pocket. He scooted forward on his chair to extend it to her, and then blinked at the expression on his face.

“Oh, naw, I ain’t gonna kill _you,_ ” he said, laughing. “Naw, bossman would hate that.”

He pushed the business card forward again, and she took it with trembling hands. It was a nice business card, simple. He had a little razor embossed on the front.

“Who is your boss?” she said, fighting for some attempt at a tone of authority.

He waited a long moment before answering. “Skulduggery Pleasant. You know _him?”_

She shook her head.

“Oh, man,” Billy-Ray said, grinning wide. “You ain’t too good at that conspiracy thing, are you? He’s a pretty famous one.”

“A famous -- a famous wizard? One of them? Or, one of you, I mean?”

He nodded.

“So is he missing his eyeballs too?”

Billy-Ray burst out laughing. “Yes, actually. Very good.”

Úna clutched her aching head with weak hands. “So… is that how wizards work? They sell their eyeballs in exchange for magic?”

Billy-Ray Sanguine gave her a disappointed look. “Well, you _were_ doing well.”

Úna was still wrapping her head around the whole thing. “So can he also break through the ground, like you?”

“No!” he barked, as if offended, and then he paused. “Well. Yes, but it ain’t _nearly_ as cool when he does it.”

“Okay, sorry,” Úna said, tensing. “So, back up, Skulduggery Pleasant is … your boss … but … I’m sorry, how exactly do I factor into this?”

“Pleasant wants to get his hands on you,” Billy-Ray said, still speaking around a humongous grin. “Guess you did something to piss him off, girly. So he hired me for a special ops mission.”

“He-- he paid you?” For _me?_ she thought. What was the value of her life, in black market value? “How much?”

“I ain’t got much value for cash,” he said, “and besides, I’m sure someone coulda paid me better. He’s payin’ me with a favor.”

Úna pressed her hands together, finger tip to finger tip, and held them to her mouth. She wished she had the energy to move to more a comfortable position - it felt like Billy-Ray had tossed her on the couch like a sack of potatoes. “So you don’t work for him all the time?”

Billy-Ray actually snorted. “Oh, _hellll no._ Nothing could make me work full time for Skulduggery God Damn Pleasant, lemme tell ya. I mean-- you don’t know him, obviously, so you…” he grimaced. “Yeesh, you got a world of unpleasantness coming for ya, I’ll tell you that.”

Úna gulped. “I haven’t done anything to make him mad at me.”

“That may be true,” Billy-Ray said, tapping his chin. “But Pleasant, from what I know of him, is the type of kill anybody who’s, y’know, wronged him, but he prefers to kill everybody they know first. So I reckon it musta been your mama, or your papa, or your professor, maybe even your grocer, who pissed him off, y'know?”

Úna shivered.

He raised an eyebrow. “Ooh, was that you shiverin’ outta _fright_? You don’t seem so scared of me.”

“You said you couldn’t kill me,” she said, using all her strength to lift herself up a little.

“Doesn’t mean I couldn’t hurt you,” he said, with a wicked grin, beginning to pull a razor out of his pocket.

Úna blinked at it. “I don’t think so.”

Billy-Ray paused. “... I could.”

“I don’t think you will,” she said. “I think you’re scared of what Pleasant would do if you did.”

Billy-Ray let out a slow breath, resheathing his razor in his pocket, muttering to himself. Úna almost smiled.

“So what’s the favor?”

“My girl,” he said. “My former…” his grin, for once, faltered. “My former fiance. He’s passing on a message.”

Úna blinked. Not what was she was expecting. “And how do… how does he know your fiance? Is she normal, or is she like you and Skulduggery Pleasant? A wizard? Or a witch, I guess?”

“Pinkie,” he said, sighing. “We gotta get something straight: it’s mage, not wizard. Or sorcerer, but half the time I misspell that, so I just go with mage. Rolls right off the tongue. Anyway, yeah, she’s like us. They’re… well, I guess they’ve got mutual friends, mostly. I dunno, Tanith never really talked ‘bout him unless it was in the context of...” he trailed off, squinting up at the ceiling light. She wondered if that still hurt, without eyes. Probably not.

“Anyway, yeah, no. She _was_ the object of desire of his best friend, who is currently dead as a doornail, so, yay, good for me. Ain’t that cold, though? Sold out his BFF when his corpse was barely starting to get moldy. Not lookin’ too good for you, girly.”

Úna swallowed hard. She could feel whatever Billy-Ray had given her starting to wear off, but based on the way he was looking at her like a cat with a bird, he knew _exactly_ when it would. She could cross off “the element of surprise” on her list of ways to get out of here. (Another cliche.)

Well, if she was going to die, at least she could die informed.

“So what’s the message? If I may ask, please.”

“So polite,” Billy-Ray said, bemused. “Tanith’s an amnesiac. Of sorts. It’s a lil too common, these days, with this damn war. She don’t remember one thing about me, or our engagement.” He exhaled, slowly. “But I want her to. I mean, she make her own damn decisions - she’s a big girl, nearly a hundred, and I know things are…. different, now, betwixt us. But you can’t blame a fellow for wantin’ his girl to remember all the good times they had. All the murderin’, too.”

Úna tried not to shudder too obviously at the mention of _murder_. “That’s not very big of a favor.”

“Well, this wasn’t too big of a job,” Billy-Ray said, grinning. “Just a lot of waiting around, mostly. Listenin’ to boring gossip. You were right, by the way: I did find you through your roommates. But they didn’t hire me, just vented about you being _crazytown_ on Facebook. Even posted your picture. You don’t like social media much, do you?”

She shook her head, she swore to never make a Facebook when she was twelve, and had consequently avoided all similar websites. Now she almost wished she wasn't. Kennabeth was literally going to get her killed. She knew she should have gotten the apartment on Clara Street instead.

“Makes things tricky for me,” he said. “God, it sure is easy to find a hit with Twitter and Instagram and Tinder and what not.”

She frowned. “You’ve got a _Tinder_?”

“I’ll remind you I’m taken, girly. And I don’t use it for that.”

“You have a Tinder so you can _murder people_?”

Billy-Ray Sanguine looked offended. “I adapt to the times,” he said, “I evolve. I ain’t looking for criticism from my kidnapping victim.”

“So...” she wished she had her notebook, but her bag was sitting on the other side of the room, leaning against the wall. “I’m assuming you didn’t get engaged to an old lady, based on how much effort you put into your hair.”

He actually laughed. “Guess that’d be kinda romantic in itself, if she was mortal, huh? But naw, you’re right. Tanith is fresh as a daisy.”

“So you’re both immortal.”

He gave her finger guns.

“Do you only date other wi-- mage immortals? Or are there… Twilight situations?”

He gave her a long, strange look. “Most of us. There’s always weirdos.”

She nodded, feeling less scared of her inevitable demise/torture when she focused on all the facts she was learning. “And what about magic? Do you use wands? I didn’t see you with one when the ground broke open, do you have a different magical object…?”

“Man oh man,” Billy-Ray says, chuckling. “They did you in good. I mean, it don’t help much with magic, but this _is_ my baby…” he patted the pocket he put his razor in. “But as you correctly guessed, I ain’t gonna use it today. Blood free jobs are mighty borin’.”

“Aside from being a hitman,” Úna said, slowly. “You’re a…. what, a professional asshole?”

Billy-Ray chuckled. “Something like that. I ain’t even doing much hitmannin’ these days,” he said, sighing. “Might even be turnin’ a new leaf, we’ll see.”

His cellphone began to ring - Patsy Cline’s _Crazy_.

“Yello?” he answered into the receiver. “Uh, yeah, who the hell else would it be? Yeah, yeah, she’s fine. Lordy lou, you’ll see her in a moment, calm your tibia. Heh, heh, tibia.” He stood up, spinning his kitchen chair around with deft fingers. “Alright, alright, be out in a second.” He hung up, and then beamed at Úna. “Well, that’s your man. I’ll be out of your hair.”

“Wait,” Úna said, sitting up as he turned away from her, feeling her strength come back. “Please, don’t -- I didn’t do anything, I don’t deserve this…”

“Trust me,” Billy-Ray said, chuckling. “This exactly what you deserve.” He strode towards the door.

The door opened, but Úna could only see a tall male figure in the hallway. With Billy-Ray’s back to her, she leaned across the back of the couch and gripped the iron curtain rod in her hand, bringing it up with her as she settled back into a sitting position.  The man in the door and Billy-Ray exchanged some whispered words, and then Billy-Ray stuck his head back in through the doorway. “I’ll leave y’all to it!” he said, brightly. He disappeared down the hall, whistling cheerfully, and a second later, the door opened all the way.

A very tall man in a suit stepped through, closing the door carefully behind him.

The man had a skull for a head.

He had a _skull_ for a _head._

Úna scooted back as far as she could on the couch, her heart hammering and mouth dry. She had been prepared to go for the throat - but he didn’t have one.

Why were all of them _missing body parts?_

“I am so sorry I’m late,” he said, briskly, in a voice velvet smooth that made her feel like she was being readied for the slaughter. “I was over in England - trying to convince them that nothing was out of the ordinary when I got a call on my burner phone and suddenly had to hightail it out of there like the world was on fire…” he trailed off, and then finally seemed to look at _her._ She’d say that the wind was knocked out of him, but it wasn’t like he had to breathe. He stepped forward, and they had a weirdly intense staring contest for a few moments.

“Are you alright?” he asked at last, tilting his head, and leaning in close.

Úna took the curtain rod and swung it straight into his skull.

The skeleton fell back, exclaiming wordlessly in shock and pain, clutching the place his nose would have been. And then burst out laughing.

Úna breathed heavily, jumping to her feet. He was crazy. He was even crazier than the American.

“I suppose I deserve that,” the skeleton said, chuckling, “though you’re going to have to be more specific on why.”

Úna sucked in a sharp breath and spread her feet in a strong stance and then spun the bar between her hands, and he only barely jumped back, the effort making his tie ripple in the air.

“Are you serious?” he asked, a hint of good humor left in his voice.

Úna ignored him and let out a war cry and went to strike again. He caught the bar in his hands this time. “You _are_ serious,” he said, baffled.

Then he cursed in Gaelic.

His grip lessened on the bar and she used the opportunity to strike again, hitting him in the shoulder.

“Ow,” he said, leaping back in the limited space of the room. A chair toppled. “Stop that.”

“Why?” Úna snarled. “So some skeleton madman can, can, torture or kill me? _No way._ ” She continued her pursuit, leaping up on the coffee table, sending the rod down.

“ _He didn’t tell you?_ ” the skeleton asked, still backing up, deflecting the blows but not making any attempt to fight back - even when she swept his feet from underneath him. The curtain rod felt natural in her hands - she didn’t know where she got it from.

“Didn’t tell me what? That you’ve been hunting me down? That you’re going to _kill me?”_

The skeleton just kept _staring_ at her.

“What he did say,” she said, breathing hard, looking for another angle as she caught her breath. “Was that when you kill someone, you kill everyone they ever met, too. So what am I the end - the list?” If she wasn’t, she was hoping Kennabeth was next. If she was going down, she wanted to take someone with her.

“That’s not-- what?”

“That’s what he told me,” Úna said, holding the rod in a two handed grip, trying to figure out what would actually hurt him. She could bash his skull in, but she’d have to incapacitate him first, and he was aggravatingly agile.

“I,” the skeleton said slowly, “am going to kill him. Or, at the utter least, punch him very, very hard. Not that I have _time_ for that--”

“Why not?” she hissed.

“We’re leaving the country in a hour--” he began, and she smacked him upside his skull, causing a satisfying hollow sound “ _Ow._ I’m just making this sound worse, aren’t I--”

“If you’re going to kill me,” Úna said, between gritted teeth, “do it instead of blabbering endlessly.”

“I’m not going to kill you,” he said, putting his hands up. “Please.”

She went to hit him again.

The skeleton sighed, and then suddenly the rod was yanked out of her grip, floating in the air. Her eyes widened.

“No more hitting,” he said, slowly. “But I promise you, you will come to no harm.”

Úna walked backward, the couch hitting the back of her calves. “But he said--”

“You’re really trusting the word of a man who wears cowboy boots?” he said, tilting his head. It would almost be funny, if Úna wasn’t equal parts terrified and furious.

“... Well, no,” she said, defensively, still recoiling from him. She watched as the skeleton sent the curtain rod flying across the room and it hit the wall with a clang. Then he sat on the opposite end of the couch, calm and patient.

“But that doesn’t mean you aren’t -- that you’re not dangerous," Úna finished.

“I am dangerous,” he said, his voice very low, and Úna shivered. “But I won’t hurt you.” His voice softened. “I’d never hurt you.”

Úna grimaced in disgust. “You don’t even know me.”

“I do, in fact,” he said, voice still soft. In a much brisker tone, he continued: “Might as well just rip off the bandaid. You’re not… what’s your name, again?”

“Úna,” she said, frowning.

“Úna, yes, that was it, thank you. You’re not her.”

Úna stared at him. “What?”

“You’re not _Úna_.”

“You’re _actually_ crazy,” Úna choked out. He waved this away.

“Your name is Valkyrie Cain. You were given a new identity in the middle of a war we were both a part of.”

The ground beneath her veered far left as her body veered right. “What?”

“I hired Sanguine to find you,” he said, “which was a terrible idea, in hindsight. But months later, here we are.”

She lunged for the curtain rod and he blocked her path.

“You were brandishing a poker when we first met, you know,” he said. “So I suppose this is fitting.”

“I don’t have any memory of that. I don’t remember _anything_ about a talking skeleton. How can I not know that I’m someone else?”

The skeleton shrugged. “It happens.”

She shook her head. “I don’t believe you.”

The skeleton tossed something at her, and Úna flinched, half expecting a grenade. Instead, she caught a iPhone in a simple black case. The screen lit up, revealing a lockscreen of a pretty girl wearing all black making a stink eye at the camera. She was pretty even when she scowled.

She had Úna's _face._ But she was prettier somehow - no glasses, no badly dyed hair, and a sort of confidence that transformed her features completely. It felt like looking into the eyes of her _She’s All That_ self. But Úna definitely, certainly had never taken that picture.

“This-- that doesn’t mean anything,” she said, throwing it back at him. “You’re insane. I’m eighteen years old, I live with two terrible flatmates, I go to school, I was raised by my mother, Alice Be--”

“You’re mostly correct,” he said, “but the last one isn’t true. Call your mother.”

“What?” She checked her pocket, and to her amazement, saw that her phone was still there, untouched. The skeleton sat, patiently, as she found her mother in her contacts and called. She didn’t answer. She almost left a voicemail, but-- but something akin to panic was rising through her thoughts, something that felt more real than any of the fear she had felt before. She called her aunt, her uncle, her other uncle, even her dad and his girlfriend. No one answered.

She licked dry lips. He was still staring at her.

“I’m sorry,” he said, gently. “I didn’t want to do this. I thought Sanguine would. You don’t need glasses, by the way. You have 20/20 vision.”

She took them off, peered at him, put them back on. He was right - there was no difference. She had been wearing glasses since she was fifteen.

Or so she thought.

“And why would I trust you, even if I _am_ this Valkyrie Cain person?”

“Because we’re best friends,” Skulduggery said, which felt weirdly _Babysitters Club_ in his smooth, deep voice.

Úna shook her head rapidly. “Billy-Ray said your best friend was dead.”

The skeleton exhaled slowly. “Of course he did.”

“Why would he lie about that?” Úna scoffed, disbelieving.

“Because he would use a different set of words to describe our…” he groaned. “I knew I should have hired someone else. _Anyone_ else.”

Úna advanced, fire in her eyes. “I don’t know -- you’re all crazy, I’ve never met you before in my life, my mother -- my family are real people--” she lunged forward, throwing a wild, reckless punch at his head.

Skulduggery caught her hand instead, and Úna froze.

She could feel his finger bones through the black leather - pleasantly cool against her flesh. She could feel - not a pulse, but something under the leather, like a hum, a buzz - something that felt like _magic_ , for lack of better description. This - bones under leather, magic under bones - was not a sensation she had ever felt before, this was not something she knew-- and yet...

Her fingers intertwined with his, her pulse humming against the leather, the feeling of familiarity rippling up her arm.

She didn’t know him -- but her skin did.

She looked at their hands and then back up at him. He looked shocked -- clearly, this wasn’t the reaction he had been expecting, either. And that was funny, too - she knew he was shocked, despite the lack of face.

Feeling like she had been possessed, Úna kept one hand clutched tight in his, and the other wandered up his arm. She could feel the bones of his arm, his suit expensive and soft to the touch. He stood completely still as she did this, even as the flat of her hand covered his skull, moving across the surface. No breath left his teeth, and his skull seemed to bleed all warmth from her hand. Her heart was pounding and her throat was tight, even as her touch whispered that _we know him, we know him, we know him._ Out of curiosity, she traced her fingertips across his cheekbones and to the back of his skull, tracing the edges of his -- his spine? His neck?

It was a strange sensation.

Her hand wandered down of it own accord, beneath his shirt collar, and pressed with her fingertips, just so.

“Whoa,” she said, as a face rippled into existence out of nowhere. It was an ordinary face, nothing special, but she could see the same cheekbones, the same width of his chin.

“That’s…” he blinked, like he was coming out of a daze. “It’s called a facade.”

“Oh,” she said. Her hand drifted up again, to touch the nose and cheekbones that had just popped into existence. Skulduggery caught her wrist before she could.

“I’m not sure how much more I can take,” he murmured.

She pulled back slightly. “Does it hurt?”

“No,” he said, letting go of her wrist to disable the facade. “But it’s…” he trailed off, looking at her. Valkyrie was tongue tied as well, her ears ringing, her thoughts too quiet over the din of the rest her mind. They kept holding hands.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” Valkyrie said. “But I know you, clearly. Did I make a habit of touching your face?”

He actually laughed. “No.”

“But we held hands a lot?”

He turned his skull away slightly. “Not _that_ much.”

She wanted to keep touching, but something was telling her she probably shouldn’t. Like it was rude or weird to touch skeleton’s faces, and he was her friend, and she never wanted things to be weird between them --

She dismissed the thoughts, finding the timbre and feel of them both foreign and familiar.

“You can touch my face,” she said, “I feel like that’s fair.”

His head tilted. “I’m good, thanks.”

“It’ll be weirder if you don’t.”

“Despite the lack of eyes,” he said, “I do not need to do a blind man’s touch test.”

Valkyrie blinked. “What’s wrong with my face?’

“Nothing.”

“Then go ahead,” she said, tilting her head towards him like a cat seeking attention. "Anything goes. Make it even.”

He hesitated - hand hovering - and then reached out. He took her glasses off first, pulling them gently off her face and tossing them aside. She flinched before remembering they were useless. She didn’t flinch, however, as he brushed her hair off her forehead - business like, orderly. And then he hesitated.

“Do I look more like her now?” she asked, staring up at him.

“You _are_ her,” he said. “And I’m me.”

She scoffed. “I can’t imagine you being anything but.” She wanted to touch his skull again; she shoved her hands in her pockets instead.

He was still hesitating, so she leaned forward until their foreheads were touching, so he couldn’t focus on her too pink hair. They stood like that for a long moment, the buzz of thoughts in Valkyrie’s head not entirely unpleasant.

She frowned at him, pulling back. “What _are_ we?” she said, genuinely asking. “Because my heart is pounding like crazy. But I still want to hit you.”

“You always want to hit me,” he said, by way of answer. “You wanted to hit me when you didn’t know who I was. It’s fundamental to our relationship.”

“Fair enough.” Her mind was buzzing - whispering words about punching people in the face, the best way to break a nose, how to use magic to stop someone in a fight, all swarming around in her head. It was making her dizzy.

“This isn’t how amnesia works,” she said. “... nor the witness protection program. What happened?”

“You still don’t remember?”

She shook her head. “I can barely _think_. My head is pounding.”

“You’re probably trying to break the programming,” he said. “I’ll keep it brief. A group of people thought you were … too dangerous to keep around. But they didn’t know how to kill you. So they wiped your mind, built you into someone else. Someone ordinary.”

“A student conspiracy theorist,” she said.

“The conspiracy thing must have been a glitch,” Skulduggery said. “Your attempt at finding your way home. There’s something weirdly charming about it, admittedly.”

“How long have I been Úna?”

“Six months, three weeks, and four days,” said Skulduggery.

Valkyrie looked at him. “Why didn’t they change me? The way I look? Like--” there was a name, on the very tip of her tongue. Her head was aching like she had a migraine, like it was threatening to split apart.

“Ryan,” he said. “You wouldn’t be able to keep that appearance for very long. They were in a rush, too, which was probably why they kept you in Ireland.”

“So why did you hunt me down?”

He looked at her in surprise.

“Oh,” she said, as something wordless slipped between her ribs. “You would,” she said, echoing words in a context she couldn’t remember.

He just nodded.

She winced suddenly at a sharp pain that came from behind her eyes, and fell back down on the couch. He followed, kneeling.

“Valkyrie, are you alright?”

“My head is killing me,” she groaned. “I can’t--” she kept her eyes squeezed shut. “I just keep getting names and images and faces--”

“You’re breaking through,” he said, his thumb tracing a circle on her knee.

“It didn’t hurt like this for Ryan,” she moaned.

“Well, Ryan was temporary,” he said, stroking the top of her head, applying a tiny bit of heat to the aching parts. “Úna was supposed to be forever. And there’s also…”

Valkyrie waited him for finish the sentence. But he didn’t.

“We’ll have to keep you here until you’re back to yourself. I just hope it doesn’t take so long.”

“We’re fleeing the country,” she said, with a groan. “Right? Because…”

“Because if they find you,” he said, “they’ll take you away again.”

“Why?” Valkyrie said, squeezing her face tight in an attempt to alleviate the pain. “Why are they so scared of me?”

Skulduggery didn’t say anything, and that made her feel frightened for the first time since she realized he was telling the truth.

“Just take it easy,” Skulduggery said gently, voice lowering to a murmur that made her nerves buzz like plucked guitar strings. “We’ve got two hours til our flight leaves,” he said. “Hopefully you’ll feel better soon, but if not, I’ll find the next available flight off the continent..”

“Where are we going?” she said, eyes still closed.

“Somewhere tropical. You always complain about me never taking you on vacation.”

She smiled, despite the pain. “I remember that, actually.”

“I’m glad you remember all the things you _don’t_ like about me.”

His phone rang - _Crazy Frog._

Valkyrie let out a confused questioning sound.

“That was all you,” Skulduggery muttered as explanation, and then, a  second later -- “It’s Sanguine.”

“Hello? I can’t hear you, what are you -- no, we haven’t-- I -- Sanguine, speak up. Sanguine?”

She could hear him very softly on the line - buzzy, hard to understand, constantly getting interruptions.

“Wasn’t me--”

“--I swear--”

“--tapped her phone--”

“ _Get out of there.”_

Valkyrie cautiously opened her eyes as Skulduggery went silent.

“He hung up,” he said. “Or got interrupted.”

Valkyrie frowned.

“Valkyrie, if you’re able--” he didn’t get to finish the sentence before the door burst open. Skulduggery was already in a defensive stance, fireballs in one hand and gun in the other (that was somehow both utterly shocking and weirdly reassuring all at once). Valkyrie watched the door being forced open, expecting Billy-Ray Sanguine… But no.

There was a group of men at the door, all of whom faces looked familiar but her mind was far too foggy to connect to names.

Before Skulduggery could fire, his gun shot out of his hands, flying over to where the curtain rod was. The men advanced. Valkyrie’s head ached.

“You know what we have to do, Skulduggery,” said a man, black hair and gold eyes. He was handsome, but something about him made her hair stand on end, made her want to scream--

“You’re not taking her,” Skulduggery snarled, but he was flying back in a second, slamming into the wall. Valkyrie screamed his name, tried to stand. They were advancing on her -- headed by a blond boy, his blue eyes wide and apologetic. She took a step back.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said, her hands out. Something was clawing its way up through her mind - shoving past the memories and answers _(_ Fletcher, his name was Fletcher-- _)_ screaming, _let me out, let me out, I’ll kill them for you, we’ll be safe--_

Valkyrie stood, her entire mind a cacophony of pain and noise, considering. Something was telling her it was a bad idea, something was telling her that voice had been pressed down small and tight for a reason, but she needed to get out of this room, she and Skulduggery needed to be --

Something sharp pressed into her leg, and once again: everything went black.

 _Such a cliche,_ whispered the last remnants of Úna's thoughts.

* * *

She slumped like a rag doll in a plump red armchair, her hair wet and rung out on a towel on the back of the chair. Another towel was around her shoulders. She could barely feel it.

Whatever they had given her was stronger than what’s-his-face had used. She felt like she had weights pressing down on every inch of her body.

She couldn’t quite remember when that first dose was, though. Or what that was, or why it was. Just that it meant she felt very, very, very sleepy...

In front of her man and a woman had cool hands pressing on either side of her temple. They were talking to each other in cool, calm voices, and had apparently not notice her waking up.

“We can’t get rid of her accent.”

“But we’re sending her to Philadelphia--”

“So she’ll be an Irish girl in America. It’s not that unusual. We’ll give her a nice, classic name -- Deirdre, maybe?”

“Who famously died of a broken heart. Bit on the nose,” said the woman.

“So was Úna,” he scoffed. “Can’t we just name her Katie or something?”

“Absolutely not. And it’s easier to keep track this way.” She shook her head as she spoke, and the man cut in immediately.

While they argued, someone was digging gently at her scalp. The girl remembered the sensation - and the smell. She couldn’t remember exactly what it was called, though… rhymed with… hmm.

“Sweetheart?” the woman asked, and she forced her tired eyes to look at her.

“Oh, good, you’re up,” she said. “I told you we shouldn’t have done this while she was unconscious.”

“It’s fine,” the man said. “We’ve got her now. Your name is Deirdre O'Donoghue.”

“Kay,” Deirdre said, blinking sleepily.

“You’ve got a divorced set of parents and no siblings…”

The woman stood up, taking her hand off Deirdre’s forehead, and sighed. She was old, wearing long, drapey clothing and a lot of jewelry, which gave her a cool-grandmother kind of look. “He’ll find her again, you know.”

“Maybe not,” the man said, not looking up from Deirdre.

“Absolutely he will,” she said. “I saw--”

“Your visions can change,” he said. “We did all of this so we could change one in particular.”

“And it’s all working out incredibly for the Grand Mage, it is,” the woman muttered. “Really, it might be easier to kill him,” she said.

“Unfortunately, Cassandra,” he said, “they’re both very difficult to kill.”

“And even harder to separate,” she said, sighing. “Good luck, Deacon.”

“Thank you,” he said. With tired, droopy eyes, Deirdre watched as she left the room, and then turned to face Deacon, who suddenly began to feel like the center of her universe, the focus of her own gravitational pull.

“Deirdre,” Deacon said, slowly, softly. “You’re a nice girl. You don’t aim for much, you’ve got self confidence issues…”

Deirdre felt the fingers combing through her hair again, and startled a little, forgetting it wasn’t just her and Deacon.

“What’s that smell?”

“Hair dye,” he said. “Now that you’ve graduated high school, you decided it was time to look a bit more grown up.”

Deirdre nodded. “Maybe an eyebrow piercing, though…”

“Ooh,” said Deacon, looking up above Deirdre’s head, presumably at the person who was dying her hair. “Not a bad idea…”

The person who was dying her hair stood up and walked out of the room, briskly. Deacon helped move Deirdre to sit up straighter, adjusting the towel resting on her shoulders that her dyed hair was resting on.

Deirdre rested heavily in his arms, watching the hair lady walk out. She didn’t know her, but if Deacon trusted her, she must have been okay.

“Is he going to be okay?” Deirdre asked. “The man you want to kill?” She licked dry lips, and focused, hard. “Skulduggery. His name is Skulduggery.”

Deacon just looked at her for a long, long, long moment. And then put both of his hands on opposite sides of her head, palms on her temples and fingertips against her inky dark hair. He was going to stain his fingers, she though, absently.

“You do not know him,” he said, firmly. “You have never met a Skulduggery Pleasant. There is no Skulduggery Pleasant.”

Slowly - like her head weighed a thousand pounds - she nodded, over and over. Then she wondered why she was nodding so much, and stopped.

“Don’t cry, dear,” he said, softer. “There’s nothing to cry over.”

Deirdre hadn’t even noticed the tears. She wondered what made her cry in the first place - surely not Deacon, who was her friend, who was her only base in the world…

“I will fix this,” he says, very softly, but Deirdre didn’t think he was speaking to her. “I will fix the world you broke. That _both_ of you broke.”

“I’m sure you will,” Deirdre said, smiling even though the tears were still dripping off her chin.

**Author's Note:**

> Prequel to [Lethe.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1476793) :) 
> 
> I had been speaking with a few people about how I felt like if I wrote Lethe in 2018 I would have done a lot of things differently - and then suddenly realized there was nothing stopping me from writing the same concept all over again. And then I was like "AND BRS CAN BE IN IT!!!!" and i NEVER get to write him so everything snowballed from there.
> 
> expect me back in 2022 with another one of these, because they can go on literally forever. (Jk.) (or am i)
> 
> SORRY FOR UPLOADING SOMETHING NOT VERY ROMANTIC FOR VALENTINES, LMAO


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